Thursday, February 18, 2010

Comic Observations: The New DC Gets a Dream Team

As I reported a little while back, DC Comics was recently made a division of Warner Bros, after long being a separate subsidiary of Time Warner. At the time, Warner exec Diane Nelson was named President of the newly created DC Entertainment, while DC's then President and Publisher Paul Levitz took a step down.

Well, Nelson set the comic world abuzz today with the announcement of the team that would be overseeing the day to day operations of DC Entertainment.

Current Executive Editor Dan Didio will become a Co-Publisher, sharing that spot with former Wildstorm imprint editorial director and legendary artist Jim Lee, who will be the other Co-Publisher. Finally, DC's long-time top level writer, Geoff Johns, will take on the new role of Chief Creative Officer.

The trio represent a sort of dream team of creative talent at DC, with Lee and Johns especially being highly regarded within in the industry.

Lee broke out as one of, if not the, singular talents of the 1990's during a stint at Marvel working on the X-Men. He left Marvel along with other highly popular artists to form Image Comics, which nearly rivalled DC and Marvel until egos and delays nearly sank the fledgling company. Lee eventually came to rest at DC, being given the opportunity to run his own imprint, Wildstorm, while pencilling some big hits for the publisher, notably the Hush storyline for Batman, the For Tomorrow Superman storyline, and teaming with Frank Miller for All Star Batman and Robin.

Geoff Johns broke out as the co-writer of a highly successful JSA relaunch in the mid nineties, along with a critically acclaimed long-time run on The Flash. But he hit the comics stratosphere with his Green Lantern: Rebirth mini series and the following ongoing Green Lantern series, which quickly became DC's top title. He has been one of the driving forces behind such blockbuster events for DC like Infinite Crisis, 52, The Sinestro Corps War and the current Blackest Night event, while also continuing his practise of reinvigorating faltering characters with Flash: Rebirth and as the head writer of the Superman line.

So, all in all, this is big news for DC, and a sign that they are serious about getting their house in order and ready to take on industry leader Marvel.